He didn’t even have to get about what she looked like because when I turned around, I already saw her. She had gray hair so pale, she looked like winter. She had eyes so blue, that I could see the ocean in them. Her bell-bottom jeans were a pink orange color, and her cowboy boots stuck out from the bottom. She notices everyone staring, but she doesn’t care. She sticks her nose up in the air and walks away.  Her fringe on her vest bounces up as she walks and we keep staring.
Later that day I notice her sitting in the back of the room in Pre-Calc.  She was back there humming a tune no one knew, oblivious to the world around her.
The teacher called on her and asked, “What’s the number for ‘X’?”
She looks up at the ceiling as if trying to find something and simply says, “ X=2.” She then proceeds to blow a bubble.
“That’s correct!” the teacher says in a stunned voice. After class, she
“Your name’s Noah, right?” she looks up at me with these huge, brown puppy dog eyes.
“Uh, last time I checked, yeah,” I reply. Honestly, I’m starting to get a little freaked out. The bell rings and I start to walk away to my next class. Willow stops me and asks me a question that I could never say no to.
“Hey, do you want to go grab a coffee sometime?” I couldn’t turn down an offer to meet with the most interesting girl in school so I said yes, and we are meeting at Starbucks on the 27th.

As soon as I see John I start talking his ear off.
“John! Willow started to talk to me and she was asking me all these questions and I was getting scared and then she likes coffee and Starbucks and I’m going there on the 27th!” By the time I’m done talking, I am completely out of breath. I’m panting like a puppy who just ran around for an hour and a half.
“ Wait, what?” John says he looks confused. I take another deep breath preparing myself to talk non stop but he stops me.
“ The short version.” He has an expression on his face I can’t really make out.
“Willow invited me to Starbucks to chat.” I say. He looks like someone just slapped him across the face. I open my mouth to ask him what was wrong with him but he turns and runs down the hallway before anything comes out of my mouth. I roll my eyes and walk down the hallway.
The next day in pre-calc, Willow comes and plops down next to me. I look at her and I don’t really know what to say. Luckily, she does and says,
“Do you want to pet my lizard?” I was taken aback by the question and I just stare at her. She leans in closer to me and asks again. The bell rings and class starts. Where does she keep a lizard at school? I soon find out that she stores it in her backpack. As the germaphobe I am, I excuse myself to the bathroom. When I walk down the hallway, I see John in his class and I start jumping up and down, trying get his attention, because I want to ask him why he ran out when I told him I was getting a coffee with Willow. He raises his hand and walks out.
“What the heck?” He sounds annoyed, but I don’t really care.
“Why did you run away when I told you I was going to Starbucks with Willow?” I wanted to know the answer so bad, my insides felt like they were leaning in. John was just standing there not saying anything, twisting his thumbs.
“I, uh, kinda was invited too…” he looks like he wants to say sorry but he says nothing. “You see, I was talking to her in English, and she invited me to go to Starbucks to meet one of her friends. I said yes, knowing that it would be pretty interesting to go and sit down with the weirdest girl in school. I ran down the hallway to ask her what friend she wanted me to meet. When I found her, she told me it was you.” Just as John finished, Willow came skipping down the hall lizard on shoulder, spinning in her baby blue dress with puffy sleeves.
“Hey guys! Excited for the 27th? I know I am!” She pats my head and skips down the hallway.
I ask John, “Did she just pat my head?” He has this sly smile on his face, skips around me and says in a high pitched “I think she did!” I smile and walk the other way.

Today is the day. Today is the day where we go and get coffee. We’re getting coffee with Willow! As I walk down the hallway, I stop at my locker and notice a piece of paper sticking out of my locker I pluck it out and open it. The calligraphy is perfect cursive and it says ‘See you later at coffee today.’ I knew almost instantly who it was from. Willow. 
John picked me up and we drove to Starbucks.

Willow met us at the front entrance. She ordered a coffee with milk. Her gray hair was up in a messy bun. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Not her normal clothing choice. She usually wore some kind of old clothing like bell bottoms or a flapper dress.
We sat down and started to talk immediately.
“So, I have asked you to come and talk to me today for one reason. I don’t have any friends at this school.” John looks at me and I look at him, and we both turn back to Willow at the same time.
“I am here to interview you to be my friends.” My mind is spinning and I don’t know what to say “It has come to my attention that Noah is on the football team. Is this correct?” I nod my head and she writes something down on her paper. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
“No, I don’t” She writes something down again. “John?”
John perks up and looks her in the eye. “I don’t play football, I don’t have a girlfriend. Any more questions?”
“Not for you. You can leave.” She waves John to the door.

“Willow, why did you want me to stay?” She starts to pick at her fingernails.
“Noah, I want you to be my friend.” I was thinking about how weird this whole day was, but you can’t really change anything when you’re with Willow. I was going to say thanks, but no thanks, but she looked so happy, I couldn’t say no.
“Yeah, okay,” I say but I am feeling guilt because Willow kicked John out.
“I will be your friend on one condition,” I say with suspense in my voice, “I will be you friend if you let John hang out with us.” She bites the inside of her lip for a moment and spits out,
“Fine” I wave John back in. He was sitting on the three little steps out front. He was trying to feed a stray dog, but the black and brown dog growled at him. I started to laugh, but he looked at me with great disgust he trudges in and gives me a look of great detest.
“What do you want?” He’ll hate me forever if I don’t tell him.
“Willow would like to tell you something.” He snaps his head over to Willow
She rolls her eyes and says, “I will allow you to be my friend on one condition.”
“Yeah, anything.” John looks at me with worried eyes, as if saying “What the heck is going on?”
“You have to let me change your wardrobe.” John and I start dying with laughter. Change an entire wardrobe? Why would John do that just to be someone’s friend?
“I’m serious.” Willow has one of those looks that your mom gives you when she tells you to clean your room and then you don’t.
“I hate your clothes.” She motions her hands as if she was that lady from Wheel of Fortune. John looks down at his Pink Floyd t-shirt.
“Why? I like my clothes just fine. You can’t tell me what to wear and when I should wear it!” Willow looks up from her drink and smiles.
“You passed.” John looks over to  me and looks at me as if to say did you know about this?
“Excuse me? I passed what is this? A test?” He continues his rant about how much Willow put him through but in my head I’m thinking “Shut up!” I know John is my best friend, but he is really, really overdramatic. He won’t ever let anything go. If we are friends in ten years, I’ll be hearing all about this five minutes

We hop into his car. We start talking the football team this season when I hear something shuffling around in the backseat under a bunch of garbage. John pulls over, gets out of the car, and starts to shuffle around in the trash.
“Willow?” John looks at me and I look back and there she is. Lizard and all. “Why are you in the backseat of my car?” From the tone of his voice, I could tell he was really mad. John hates lizard and her wasn’t too fond of having one in his backseat.
“Willow? What are you doing in the backseat of car and why do you have that slimy, scaly reptile doing in my car?”
“Um, I needed a ride?” Willow bit her lip and looked onto the road. John was so red in the face he looked like a tomato.
“How did you get here then?”
Willow bites her nails and replies “The same spot I am now.” she itches her nose and continues, “Look, I know that you probably think that I’m a stalker, but I’m not. I promise.”
“Then how did you get into my car? How do you know where I live?”
She rolls her eyes “I followed you home. Duh.” John looks really creeped out.
“Um, excuse me?” He says, “You followed me home?”
“Yeah,” she blurts out as if it was the most casual thing in the world, “I needed a ride and you had a car,” she smirks as if she was using this a entertainment. John’s face get red with anger but finally gives in.
“Where do you live?” Instead of answering John’s question, Willow laughs, “You can’t even turn me down of a ride? Yell at me! Do something. Just don’t say fine that annoys me.” John rolls his eyes,
“ Fine.” I chuckle, but John keeps going. “Fine. Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine!” Willow hops in his car, starts it up, and drives away.
“Noah,” he says in a squeaky voice that I would expect out of my little sister, “She just took my car,”

 We begin to walk home looking out for people who look like they would be willing to give us a ride, but no one stopped and picked us up. As we draw closer to John’s driveway, we notice someone sitting on top of John’s car.
“Willow?” John yells, “Is that you?” The figure pops her head up out of the parallel universe called Instagram.
“John so nice to see you!” she pauses as if she was trying to come up with something else to say, “You car is really nice!” Willow yells. John starts to jog up to his house, but when John runs, he’s about as slow as a bunch of turtles stampeding through peanut butter.
“I start jogging and within his 20 steps, I am sitting on the hood of the car with Willow.
“Hey, you want a soda?” I ask her as I get up to grab one for myself, “He has Coke, Dr. Pepper, and Sprite”
“Is water an option?” She asks.
“Um, let me run inside quick” John and I know that we can go into each other’s houses anytime we want, so I let myself in.
“Hi Noah,” Amber, John’s mom is sitting on the couch reading a magazine, “Where's John?”
She knows that John is not athletic at all, so I tell her where he is. “He’s running again” She lets out a laugh.
“That boy really needs to start working out,” she pauses and looks out the window. “ Looks like he’s here now. Who’s that girl?”
“Oh, that’s Willow, she’s new” She smiles.
“Glad to see you two are making some new friends.” She returns to her magazine and a walk out the door.

“Thank you so-” Willow starts to say but she was interrupted by the sweaty John. He chugged the water, chugged my soda, chugged another soda, and lies down on the hot cement.
“I’m-never-running-again,” He says in between gasps. I laugh at him, but Willow just sits there and frowns.
“Drop and give me 20,” John looks at me as if he was telling me to help him.
“20 pushups?” John asks “ I don’t exercise,”
Willow laughs, “Obviously. You couldn’t even jog for 3 minutes without almost dying.”
“Fine,” John spits out, “But just know that I’m doing this for me, not for your amusement,” John goes down into a pushup position.
“One, two, three,” He falls to the hard cement “I can’t do it,” He gasps, “It’s too much,”
“Whatever,” Willow says, “You know you won’t make the football team if you can’t run,”
“How did you know that?” John snaps, “ Nobody knows that!”
“John? You want to join the football team?” John looks down at his feet and shoves his hands into his pocket.
“Why didn’t you just tell me?” I ask, “ You know I would have helped you,” He has that sad puppy look on his face, but I know that it is completely forced to try to make me laugh. Unfortunately, it worked
“I guess I didn't want to tell you because I wanted to join on my own. I know that I should have asked you, but I didn’t want you to think that I couldn’t do this on my own,”
“I understand that you would want to do that on your own, but I would have loved to help you,” I said, “We could go to the gym together and-”
John cut me off. “ The gym? Why do we have to work out?” Willow looks at him with a look as if to say are you stupid or something?
“Um, John, to be on the football team you have to have some muscle,” He rolls his eyes and laughs
“Dude. I have a sense of humor,”
“I want frozen yogurt,” Willow blurts out, “Yogurtland anyone?”We all agree that we should go get something cold, even though we get something different. I get a smoothie, John gets a slushie, and Willow gets frozen yogurt.

When we get to school the next day, Willow isn’t there. As I go through the hallways, I see all the normal kids that everyone sees all the time, but no Willow.
After school, I make a stop at Willow’s. As I walk up onto the front steps, a woman steps out.
“Hi! I’m Ella! Can I help you with something?” I take a quick double take of Ella and quickly realize how much I see Willow in her face. She has the same ocean blue eyes and the identical style of clothes. She was wearing a striped t-shirt with a pink skirt with a poodle on the bottom like she was from the fifties or something.
John asks with a questioning voice, “So are you Willow’s sister or something?”
“Uh, yeah. I’m her twin sister,” She giggles, “A lot of people think I’m her mom. Do I really look that old?”
“No, I guess not,” I reply. Suddenly Ella bursts into laughter. John was confused, and frankly, so was I.
“Um, Ella what’s-” She cut me off with an even louder laugh.
“ You guys are so naive! I can’t believe that you fell for that!” She laughs even harder. Then, to all of our surprise, she pulls off a brown wig, and out pops Willow’s gray hair.
“Wait,” John questions, “So you skipped school so you could pull a prank on us?” Willow nods.
“Duh. Everyone does that,”
“Willow. No one does that,”  She looks like someone had told her that she couldn’t have the puppy she wanted.
“Whatever,” She starts to walk back to her house and she turns around. She looks like she is about to say something, but she keeps her mouth shut and walks through the door.

 The next day, Willow was back at school, but something was a little off about her. She was completely quiet. When asked what was wrong with her, she shrugged her shoulders and walked away. John and I went over to her house but her parents said she wasn’t home.

Willow didn’t want to talk to any of us. She completely isolated herself from the rest of the world. When I tried her cell, it went straight to voicemail. No one had heard from her in days and I was beginning to worry about her. As the good friend that I am, I decided to go look for her. First, I went to her favorite hangout spot: Yogurtland. As I guessed, she was sitting right in front of it sitting at her favorite picnic table.
“Where have you been,” I ask, “ Everyone is worried about you,” she sets down her yogurt.
“ I don’t belong here anymore,” she says, “Everyone, even John thinks that I’m an outsider in this school,” She pauses, “ I’m moving one town over to Blue Water High. It’s an arts school so I can express myself and no one will look at me funny,” I completely understood where she was coming from. Riverbank hadn’t really been a family with open arms. “ Look Noah, I’m sorry. I really am. I know that this isn’t exactly ideal, but people have to move on,” She gets up and walks away.

I’m 26 now. I have a good job, a good life. John and I have kept in touch although he moved to Norway for work. After we graduated high school, I saw a figure with gray hair in front of my house. Before I could get to her, she ran away into the darkness.
I saw the same figure for the next three nights but in the fourth night, she never came back.
I was 23 when I saw her again, and I was on a business trip in Cleveland, Ohio. She was speaking to a crowd with her back turned to me. I don’t know what came over me, but I had to say something.
“Willow!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. All I see is that gray hair whipping around and Willow’s face looking at mine. She jumps down from the table she’s standing on and walks over to me.
She says one thing to me, and I know that I’ve missed her but I could never tell if it was a friend thing or something more than that.
I guess it was something more than that because she now is standing across from me, reciting her vows.